The use of group printers is becoming increasingly common. A group printer is shared by a plurality of clients, such as a plurality of individual users each accessing the group printer from an independent computer workstation. In this manner, the plurality of clients may all print to the group printer to eliminate the need for multiple printers dedicated to each user.
The vast majority of group printers utilize a point and print or “Point-n-Print (PnP)” scenario. PnP is a term that refers to the capability of allowing a client to create a connection to a group printer without providing disks or other physical installation media to the client. All necessary printer components, such as printer drivers and connectivity components, are automatically downloaded from a print server to the client. The PnP capability provides significant benefits when a large number of clients share a group printer, because PnP is the most efficient method of installing printer drivers on client machines operating with restricted user access rights.
Restricted user access rights refers to the inability of users to access certain features on a client machine. For example, a user with restricted user access rights is typically prevented from directly writing data to a system folder of a computer operating system. A system folder is an area of a hard drive, which stores essential files required for the operating system to function, such as fonts, system extensions, control panels, and preferences. Thus, for instance, a user with restricted user access rights, or a non-administrator, cannot write data to, or otherwise modify data in, the “system32” folder of the Windows™ operating system.
Many users are provided with restricted user access rights because adding, removing, and/or otherwise modifying data stored in system folders can result in severe system errors. Therefore, system administrators (“admins”) prefer to prevent most users from accessing system folders. Accordingly, printer components downloaded by clients in PnP architectures are generally stored in non-system folders of the client, because most users do not have the user access rights necessary to store data in a system folder. Non-system folders are, therefore, folders, which do not require admin rights to store data therein.
Currently, the restricted user access rights held by most users only allows for one-way communication between the client and the group printer. That is, a client may send a print job from the client to the printer to be printed, but clients cannot receive communications from the group printer. This is because, bi-directional (Bi-Di) communication, which allows clients to query a printer and receive a response back from the printer, requires printer components to be stored in system folders of the client. Thus, Bi-Di communication is not feasible in current PnP architectures, because a user with restricted user access rights cannot store printer components in system folders.
However, with the complexity of print jobs and the number of clients sharing group printers increasing, the need for enabling Bi-Di communication between the printer and the clients with restricted user access rights is important for improving the functionality of group printers. This is because Bi-Di communication allows user to quickly get detailed information pertaining to the current status or failure of print jobs.